St. Paul dining guide: Part 2

It has been more than a year since I wrote about visiting a handful of restaurants that define St. Paul.

That was shortly after I took over the Eat beat and I thought I couldn't properly cover the city's restaurants without having visited some of its tried-and-true eateries, those that have lasted through good times and bad and have helped define the city's culinary history.

I thought I had done a pretty good job, but readers told me otherwise. They offered a long list of places I'd missed, many of which I had never been to.

So I slowly chipped away at the list over the past year or so, and here, in no particular order, are seven more restaurants that are, like St. Paul, a little less glitz and glam than their Minneapolis counterparts, a little more no-nonsense, but have managed to feed a city for at least a decade.

YARUSSO-BROS.

This place shares the winner's circle of St. Paul red-sauce Italian restaurants with DeGidio's and Cossetta, all of which have been serving residents since the Great Depression.

Yarusso-Bros. opened in 1933 and has been turning out spaghetti like Grandma made since then. The restaurant is still run by Fred and Michael Yarusso, grandsons of the original owner, Francesco Yarusso.

My kids love the place and still ask when we can go back for pizza, garlic bread with real, pungent garlic, and spaghetti with that famous red sauce.

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The atmosphere is decidedly old-school, with exposed brick walls, maroon booths and lots of historic pictures on the wall.

GLOCKENSPIEL

A relative youngster on this list, the historic building (built in 1887 as a home for the Czech-Slovak Protective Society) and the traditional German decor make this restaurant, which opened in 2000, look like it has been around forever.

The Glockenspiel's ornate bar on February 13, 2014. (Pioneer Press: John Autey)

In between its original use and the current iteration, the building also housed Continental Pantry & House of Fine Cakes, an eclectic Old World European restaurant and bakery.

Owner Martin Ziegler, who is from Germany, is a master butcher who also owns Deutschland Meats in Lindstrom and Sanborn.

For that reason, besides flights of German beer and fresh, homemade soft pretzels, the sausages are a great bet here. The sausage platter, large enough to feed at least two hungry people, comes with an authentic, delicious warm German potato salad.

I also love the Gulaschsuppe, a comforting beef stew spiced heavily with earthy paprika. It's just the thing for a winter lunch.

MAMA'S PIZZA

This iconic North End pizzeria has been slinging pies and other Italian specialties since 1964, and is still run by the nephew of the original owner.

It has been renovated after a water-main break forced the restaurant's closure for nearly a year in 2007, but the mom-and-pop atmosphere is still there.

Families crowd the dining room, even on weeknights, for the cracker-crusted pizza loaded with tangy red sauce and an obscene amount of cheese. If you eat in, you get a tiny soft-serve ice cream cone at the end of the meal, a super sweet touch.

The walls are covered with fun, funky frescoes, and if you are lucky enough to score a booth, it will have a small pay TV.

FOREPAUGH'S

Talk about history! The Forepaugh house, adjacent to Irvine Park, was built in 1870 by Joseph Forepaugh, a dry-goods dealer during the Civil War who earned enough money to retire by age 34.

Forepaugh's maid and mistress, Molly, is said to have hanged herself out of a window on the mansion's third floor, and a distraught Forepaugh shot himself on some nearby railroad tracks. Both are rumored to haunt the place, but we didn't see any ghosts while we were there.

The mansion was restored and turned into a restaurant in the 1980s, and it has gone through ownership changes since.

The current version of Forepaugh's is lucky to have chef Donald Gonzalez at the helm, serving traditional beef Wellington alongside his creative, artistically presented cuisine.

Expect walleye paired with coconut curry broth and duck paired with pineapple and foie gras. A few times, I was skeptical that ingredients that didn't sound complimentary would result in a cohesive dish, but Gonzalez is the kind of chef who can pull it off.

Forepaugh's is expensive, but for a date night or to impress out-of-town guests, it's a good spot.

MOSCOW ON THE HILL

I seriously can't believe I hadn't been here before taking the Eat job. The atmosphere is fun and romantic, the vodka is out of this world, and the food is good -- really good.

The restaurant, on swank Cathedral Hill, was converted in 1997 from a French restaurant to serve the cuisine of owners Marina and Naum Liberman's homeland.

Moscow on the Hill has struck a chord, not only with Russian immigrants but also with neighbors who appreciate the fantastic wild rice cabbage rolls, delicate dumplings and house-made horseradish vodka.

The sizable patio is the place to be in the summer -- it's often less crowded than nearby W.A. Frost. There's also live Russian music on the weekends to add to the festive atmosphere.

TIN CUP

Tin Cup (or Cup's) depending on whom you ask, has been feeding the North End for more than 50 years.

The most recent owners, Joan Knippenberg and Gidget Bailey, are true community boosters -- they feed hungry kids, homeless people or anyone else who can't afford a hot meal. They serve a mean burger, too, using a slightly sweet, perfectly pillowy St. Agnes bun and juicy beef.

The Food Network's "Man v. Food Nation" visited the dive bar last summer, and patrons cheered on a kid trying to eat two giant "juicy lucifers" and a couple of pounds of fries to impress his high-school crush.

He crushed it.

There's a meat raffle on Sundays, a pull-tab counter up front, and if you eat at the bar, they give you an ingenious TV-tray-like apparatus to make chowing that burger more comfortable.